Chapter Text
There are those days when your lover would return from a mission, bruised and with a lost look in his eyes that said that pain was still very fresh in his mind.
Bucky may have been stronger than most men, but he wasn’t an unfeeling wall on brick and mortar.
There were nights when he would feel so helpless as to clutch onto you, pulling you tight to him as you felt his chest rise in shuddering breaths, and tears dampen your hair.
There are even those nights when he isn’t there at all, just staring back at the shreds of memories that may never be completed.
You curse those who have stolen those memories. Those who have stolen decades of his life. Those who have brought these days.
This was a night when he seemed to be a torrent behind his eyes. His muscles were tense to the touch, and he refused to meet your eyes at times. You stand in front of him, reassuring him that you are real, and you would never harm him.
Your thumbs wipe away the moisture that treaded down his cheek. You wish that you could wipe away all the pain he has ever experienced, but would that make you as bad as them?
You persuade him to take a shower while you heat up the dinner you made in the oven. It’s not long until you hear the sound of the shower turn off, and minutes pass till he’s out of the bathroom. By then, dinner is already on a plate, but he sat down with no intentions of eating it, from the looks of it.
Talk was slow, almost hesitant, but he was talking about the recent missions, and how he couldn’t stand them, and how he felt so useless. He talked about losing an agent on the field, a life that could have gone on living had she not step foot outside her house that day.
He doesn’t eat, but just by looking at him told you that he wanted this day to end. You took his hand and led him to bed, silently telling him things that couldn’t be said in one night.
He slowly loses tension as he keeps you in his arms and tucked under his chin. He was trying to protect you from everything that could harm you, even if it risked his own life. You only relaxed in his arms and pushed your leg over his, drawing his legs to curl around yours as you threw an arm around him.
“I love you.” You whisper, placing a kiss on place where the metal of his arm and the skin of his chest met.
He’s silent, but no words are needed.
You wake up to him gone, feeling cold without him. Shield really does need all of their operatives at this time, but you can’t help but feel bitter at how the world has consumed so much time from people like Bucky, or the Avengers, or anyone else who has the responsibility to care for those who face an insurmountable task.
You run a hand over your stomach, feeling the life that swells inside you, yet to make it obvious. He still didn’t know that the child that rested just below your heart was his, and soon to meet the world in seven months.
There was no way you could bring this up to him, it would turn him into a nervous wreck.
Sighing, you reach over and pull his pillow to your body and curl around it, trying to feel any residual warmth.
It’s just one of those days.